


the royal we

by blurhawaii



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, First Time, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Other, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-05 04:27:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16803634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blurhawaii/pseuds/blurhawaii
Summary: Last week, while he was roaming the city, Eddie had wasted a quarter on one of those gumball machines and had gotten a marbled red and white rubber ball for his troubles, instead of the tasteless gum he’d been hoping for. He’d taken to blindly tossing it around his apartment for Venom to snatch out of the air because keeping Venom entertained was a lot like rearing a toddler. It had worked great until an errant rebound had sent it sailing through his broken window. Serves him right for trying to seal it up with a garbage bag and some scotch tape but, at the time, Venom hadlovedit.





	the royal we

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kahvi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahvi/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Kahvi.

Eddie falls asleep in his bed and wakes up disoriented on the couch a fair number of times before he finally gets the message. He pushes up his sleeves, lifts with his legs and carries the television into the bedroom.

He sacrifices his only lamp to plug it in and learns to fall asleep with the background noise. It’s almost like living with someone again, someone who works odd hours but can’t help wrapping an arm around his waist when they finally make it to bed.

Venom’s still feeling pretty weak and prefers to ball up tight somewhere around Eddie’s heart. He’d patted his chest and called him _heartburn_ once and felt a pulse of good and bad, the equivalent of someone rocking their flat hand like a seesaw. Not bad but needs improvement.

Venom’s weak alright, the fight in him reduced to the growl of an animal in pain, but that touch always comes. Right as Eddie’s drifting off. Like an arm around his waist and a hand splayed against his stomach where it’s always the warmest.

Anne says to him _sit_ while she gestures towards the kitchen. She's making a pot of coffee like she always does when she invites Eddie over, and Eddie takes a good long look at that empty chair waiting for him and drops down right where he’s standing. In the process of crossing his legs, curled up on the floor, he realises something isn’t right.

“I don't know why I did that,” Eddie says, craning his head way back. Venom’s being typically quiet where he’s submerged in the depth of Eddie’s chest but he’s radiating satisfaction like a job well done, and so Eddie stays.

Anne only hums, drags a hand through his hair as she passes and begins doling out coffee into mugs that don't have any chips in them. Just like royalty. She heaps the sugar into Eddie’s and while she’s stirring it in she asks, “Have you two talked about what happened when you were separated?”

Placing his palms face down on his knees, Eddie sucks in a breath and aligns his spine. He can feel Venom coming more awake in the open channel it makes. An unfettered stream flowing upwards, against all odds.

“We don’t really talk all that much,” he says, and with his lungs full it comes out sounding reedy, almost a question. “It’s more like--” He brings his hand to the centre of his chest and the pressure builds until it spills out of him, a tangible mass that then envelops his hand fully. A shake that’s not quite a shake, more of a hold really, and he breathes out his relief in one long forceful sigh. “I think he’s still struggling, you know.”

“Well,” Anne says, coming around the counter, “I only ask because I’ve been thinking.” She passes down his coffee and the symbiote shrinks back from the heat just enough so that Eddie can wrap his hand around it. She takes a seat on a stool and she towers over them like this, in a way she always did back when they were dating, he just never took the time to notice.

“We were together only for a short time,” Anne continues, “but I do remember what it felt like to have something else, something foreign, latched onto my mind like that. He told me we weren’t a great match and that was why he was so desperate to get back to you--and he _was_ desperate, Eddie, I remember that clearly. I wake up in the middle of the night still remembering that. And so, to bond on that kind of level with something, well it’s not unthinkable to believe pieces of it might get left behind when it’s gone.”

Eddie nods, takes a scalding hot sip and struggles through the pain to keep on nodding. “You wake up thinking about me?”

“I wake up with an alien’s memories of wanting you, Eddie. That’s what I’m trying to explain to you.” She sweeps a hand down towards where Eddie is still sitting cross legged on the floor and says simply, “When Venom found me in the hospital, he was a dog.”

Last week, while he was roaming the city, Eddie had wasted a quarter on one of those gumball machines and had gotten a marbled red and white rubber ball for his troubles, instead of the tasteless gum he’d been hoping for. He’d taken to blindly tossing it around his apartment for Venom to snatch out of the air because keeping Venom entertained was a lot like rearing a toddler. It had worked great until an errant rebound had sent it sailing through his broken window. Serves him right for trying to seal it up with a garbage bag and some scotch tape but, at the time, Venom had _loved_ it.

Thinking back to that and everything Anne has been saying, combined with how readily he’d dropped to the floor at the very hint of a command and _huh_.

“That actually makes a lot of sense,” Eddie says.

In between the constant replays of Drake’s rocket exploding, the news airs some guerrilla style footage of his and Venom’s rampage through San Francisco. It’s terrible footage--dark and shaking, barely able to keep up with the speed of them crushing the front end of a car and then jumping away. But Eddie capitalises on the spike in popularity and anonymously sells a piece about himself as an urban legend to an online publication that collects oddities such as themselves.

He peppers it with just enough errors to keep them safe but also tries to paint them in a better light than a beast who just bites the heads off wrongdoers.

It’s toeing the line of propriety but he splits the paycheck between his rent and the homeless people who have made his block their home, all the while thinking about the small obituary he’d read in the Chronicle the day before. Skirth had children who will miss her greatly and Eddie’s got forty dollars divided up in his pocket that is nowhere near enough.

As he steps back into his apartment, his pockets now empty, Eddie can’t think of a reason not to ask the question that’s been rattling around in his head ever since that afternoon he’d spent sitting on Anne’s kitchen floor. He pours himself a glass of water from the sink and sips at it to Venom’s muted delight.

Once he’s drained the glass he asks, “Do you remember Maria?”

With the television relocated to his bedroom and the debris from his fight with Drake’s goons piled up in the corner, his apartment is not much more than a box with a shiny new lock. At night the sparse light is tinted orange where it’s filtered through all the scotch tape, and as Eddie wanders into the rectangle it reflects across his floor, he can feel Venom doing circles around his heart. Pacing, in his own way, like an animal in a cage.

When Venom hisses, it’s tight with feelings that aren’t his.

**boredom** , he transfers over. **pain and fear. then you.**

It’s the most he’s said since Eddie got him back. And he’s not done.

**she knew you. eddie. eddie will help. eddie always helps.**

And that stings, all things considering. That he was no help at all.

“Is that--is that why you were so quick to trust me?” Eddie asks, rolling the empty glass between his hands. “Were you just feeling what she was feeling?”

**no** , and venom drags the word out, to the point of frustration. Like someone who has answered the same question too many times. And he’s so weak, just from a conversation, that he’s slinking back into the dark to sleep.

And so Eddie lets him.

Eddie’s been a fuckup long before he lost his job, his fiancé and, very briefly, his life in one fell swoop. He forgets himself, most of the time, until some guy with gigantic shoulders corners him while he’s sitting at the bar and asks, “Hey, aren’t you Eddie Brock?”

With everything that’s happened, it’s almost a relief to be able to reach inside himself and answer, “Yeah, I guess **we** are.”

The guy tilts his head, considers all of him--tired and unshaven but content to just _be_ \--and smiles. He ignores the _we_ but everyone always does. “I really hoped you’d say that.” And all of a sudden his smile doesn’t seem so welcoming.

In a blink he has his hands buried in the front of Eddie’s hoodie. He yanks up and Eddie wasn’t much of a fighter then and isn’t much of one now, but he recognises distance is his friend in situations like this and so he brings his knees to his chest, plants his boots on the guy’s thighs and kicks out.

The drawstring around his neck cinches tight as he rears backwards and for a few teetering seconds he thinks he’s going to topple right over. But two legs quickly become four as his seat rights itself again. It rocks him back into the hold that never actually left him and the fist that comes swinging at his head.

It catches him squarely in the temple and pain bursts across his face. In between the hot beats of his pulse, Eddie can feel Venom clawing his way out of the black like a horror rising out of the depths of the ocean.

**help, eddie?** and he’s still not strong enough to fill Eddie’s skull with the question but the desire is there, seeping out of Eddie’s skin like a fever, he wants to help, doesn’t want us to be a victim, wants us **safe, eddie**.

Chances are though that Eddie deserves this. All the holes he’s dug for himself while chasing a story, he’s not the only one who would trip and fall down into them. He’s caused his fair share of collateral damage and it wouldn’t be the first time he’s ruined someone’s life by sticking his nose where it wasn’t wanted. Whatever misfortune he’s caused this guy, it must have been bad. As bad as the fist shaped bruise that’s brewing around the curve of his eye.

Then again, good guys don’t go to bars and pick fights.

Heroes don’t bite the heads off of down-on-their-luck guys in bars either, but they’re still working on what it is that heroes do, day in and day out. The head thing is about all they’ve got so far.

“Do it,” Eddie says out loud, and the guy who’s got him at arm's length squints at him.

Venom doesn’t even hesitate. He hauls Eddie’s arm back and punches. He misses, spectacularly so, and Eddie’s knuckles splinter while the wood lining the edge of the bar does not. As an intimidation technique though, it works great, because the guy steps back with a face like he’s made a mistake even looking Eddie’s way and he’s able to roll off of his seat and away.

He hears Mrs. Chen’s voice rumble around his head while he makes noises like a wounded animal-- _mind is body, Eddie, mind is body_ \--and feels them both screaming at him, asking what the hell he’s trying to accomplish here exactly.

“The arm thing,” Eddie wheezes, and he’s hunched right over with his hand cradled uselessly against his stomach. “I wanted--you were supposed to do the thing. With the arm.”

“What?” the guy says, and over that--

\--from a deep down place carved out just for him, a quiet and confused, **oh, did we not do it?**

It isn’t until the arm of his hoodie then starts to ripple and widen unnaturally that Eddie realises this is the absolute worst way to go about laying low. Venom’s voice sounds like a drunken slur in his head and the way his arm can’t decide what direction it wants to go, it’s mistaking him for a man that still wants this fight. Which he really, really does not.

He drags the end of his sleeve over the hand that’s now sprouting claws and puts on his best non threatening face. All while parts of him shift and rearrange right before their eyes, he tries his best to appear small.

“ **We’re** sorry, man,” Eddie says, with a whine. “I was a real shithead in the past, I’m sure, but **we’re** working on it now. I can promise you that. Slow progress is still progress, right?” He points with his chin towards his half finished beer still sitting upright on the bar as he backs into the exit. He’s amazed he didn’t knock it down in all his flailing. “That’s yours if you want it, yeah? We good? Alright then.”

And with that, Eddie ducks out and runs.

His legs take him across the street with no input from his brain, and he used to be better at this kind of stuff--tailing people, blending in, you know, subtlety--now he bounces off of the hoods of cars to the sounds of horns blaring because he forgot to look both ways first.

Venom takes the brunt of the hit but it still sends Eddie sprawling to the ground and when he makes it back up, both palms raised in a _sorry, my bad_ to the driver, he’s got some serious road rash streaked up one arm while the other’s a writhing black mass that he’s still trying in vain to hide behind his back.

“Aw, hell,” Eddie says, because there’s a distinctly non-human shaped dent in this guy’s car now and he’s going to be looking at him for the cause. Him, Eddie, the unfortunately human shaped man. “We gotta go over those ground rules again,” he says with a groan, “cause we seriously can’t keep doing this.”

**heroes help, eddie** , Venom growls, apropos of nothing, and god knows where he got that from. What brain he clawed that from. Because he’s nothing of the sort, no help at all as Eddie crawls hand over hand across the hood and limps to the relative safety of the sidewalk. The car is quick to peel away, no real surprise there, and Eddie takes stock of himself.

Something important inside him is struggling to pop back into place and instead of fixing it Venom is slinking away, vulnerable and weak, to curl up in the place where Eddie runs hottest.

And so Eddie lets him.

Eddie wakes up with his head pillowed, shockingly, not on a pillow at all. There’s things that aren’t fingers in his hair and a touch that bleeds fondness laid carefully along the bruise around his eye. Over the rushing in his ears that sounds like holding up a shell and hearing your own blood pumping back, he can hear the television playing game shows to itself. Buzzers and bells coming somewhat muffled.

He’s still half asleep, following the traces of light that make it through the cocoon of webbing forming a protective shell around his head, and the air is stiflingly hot with his breath getting turned back on him. He brushes his mouth over the darkness moving under his cheek and it flares up to meet him like the arch of a cat’s back.

“Hey, love,” he says into the motion, “can you let me up?”

Instead of unfurling, the hold on him tightens. Like Anne refusing to let him leave the bed, Venom learned from the best.

The familiarity of it triggers something and Eddie gets a flash of his own flushed face and parted lips over the bond, an image that is so fucking bizarre and out of body that Eddie reacts on the fly, letting his own obvious arousal wash over him. It's nothing like jerking off alone, remembering how Anne used to move, and sigh, and touch her thumbs to the generous swell of his bottom lip before she would kiss him. It's very much like fucking himself to the sound of Venom hissing **us, us, us, eddie** , into his ear.

There’s something so grand in the potential that it has Eddie rolling over and pushing his hips hard into his sheets. One long toe curling grind before he has to come back up for air.

“You can’t do that,” Eddie gasps. “You can’t--” Because that’s how Anne used to see him, back before Eddie screwed everything up, and using it here now feels a lot like yet another betrayal.

The dark above him cracks open like glass, a little at a time until it all falls away and Eddie’s left panting into the ceiling. He can feel Venom retreating, like cold leeching heat, but Eddie didn’t mean for him to stop. They just need to go about this a different way. A way that is only theirs and no one else's.

“Gimme your hand,” he says, flexing his fingers on the pillow by his head, and they both know that’s not how this works. Not technically. But Venom manifests, all the same. Forms solid against his hand, skin and symbiote entwined, and gives Eddie something to push against.

**you liked it** , Venom says, and he sounds accusatory, mean even, like it should be paired with a pout. He sounds so much like his old shit stirring self that Eddie can’t help but laugh.

“Yeah, buddy, but it’s too damn weird. You gotta slow it down. Give me a chance to get used to it first.”

It's not quite a kiss that follows, without a mouth to give it, just pressure spilling over his bottom lip and then pausing, waiting, asking. Eddie closes his mouth around it and sucks. Chemicals coat his tongue, tasting like plastics, something manufactured and produced, and it's not bad exactly, only different. Something that will take a lot of getting used to.

Venom maps his teeth in a way he’s never felt done before and then pulls back.

“I guess **we’re** really doing this then,” Eddie pants, the moment his mouth is free, and it’s kind of hard to deny when he’s achingly hard from just a few touches. But saying it out loud helps to separate them as two entities choosing to come together instead of the lonely alternative.

Venom’s still slick from his mouth and he leaves a wet trail down Eddie’s neck on his way to join back up with the rest of himself, the mass that’s bubbling up through the material of Eddie’s shirt. From there, his density increases until he’s two hands holding Eddie down by his shoulders.

Anne used to get a kick out of pushing and pulling him around in bed, wordlessly directing him to do what she wanted, go where she wanted him. He had liked it too, there’s no shame in a bit of vulnerability, not when you’ve got absolute trust in the person. Here, he squirms against the weight just enough to feel the resistance tugging at his muscles and then he gives in, relaxes with a faint shudder that says everything he hopes it does.

**good boy, eddie** , Venom drawls, complete without irony. Like he wasn’t the one chasing a little rubber ball around their apartment and curling up on the floor at the feet of someone who might have been their master if fate had dealt them a slightly different hand.

And they’re rubbing off on each other, in more ways than one, because Eddie growls in the back of his throat and turns belly up and wanting. There’s nothing to rub against like this though, no friction to be had, until finally, finally Venom inches down and slides under his waistband to cover all of him.

And so Eddie lets him.


End file.
